monitor the system totally with dstat

You must have ever monitored the system with different tools:

1. "vmstat 2" to get a total system "proc,mem,swap,io,sys,cpu" load;
2. "iostat 2" to get all block devices with seperated I/O bandwidth data;
3. "ifstat 2" to get different network interfaces network activity;
4. "top" to get the most CPU-consuming processes;

Now you can do all these things within dstat:

gektop@tux ~ 0 $ dstat -M proc,cpu,mem,sys,page,net,disk,topcpu,topmem,topio,topbio 5
---procs--- ----total-cpu-usage---- ------memory-usage----- ---system-- ---paging-- -net/total- -dsk/total- -most-expensive- -most-expensive- ----most-expensive---- ----most-expensive----
run blk new|usr sys idl wai hiq siq| used  buff  cach  free| int   csw |  in   out | recv  send| read  writ|  cpu process   | memory process |     i/o process      |  block i/o process
0   0   6| 39   9  37  14   0   1| 272M   25M  193M   12M| 760  2178 |   0    21B|   0     0 |5577k 1645k|firefox       10|firefox     125M|mount.ntfs-  10M:8223k|mount.ntfs-2699k: 736k
3   0   8| 93   6   0   0   0   1| 252M   25M  189M   37M| 546   980 |   0     0 |3197B  564B| 109k  675k|firefox       15|firefox     125M|mount.ntfs- 771k:3056B|pdflush       0 :  82k
3   0  71| 77  16   0   7   0   1| 257M   26M  191M   29M| 548  1247 |   0     0 |5445B  689B| 230k  544k|firefox       13|firefox     125M|mount.ntfs- 771k:3056B|pdflush       0 :  94k
2   0  24| 85  14   0   1   0   0| 251M   26M  192M   33M| 550  1046 |   0     0 |1173B  418B|  50k  344k|firefox       12|firefox     125M|mount.ntfs- 771k:3056B|pdflush       0 :  85k
2   0  25| 85  12   0   2   0   0| 275M   26M  194M 8044k| 517  1024 |   0     0 |1206B  448B| 104k  642k|cc1           22|firefox     125M|mount.ntfs- 771k:3056B|pdflush       0 :  47k
2   0   9| 88   9   0   2   0   1| 278M   26M  193M 5568k| 558  1056 |   0     0 |1383B  615B| 110k  451k|cc1           26|firefox     125M|mount.ntfs- 771k:3056B|pdflush       0 :  51k

The meanings of "proc,cpu,mem,sys,page,net,disk,topcpu,topmem,topio,topbio" is obvious, it speaks for itself, the design of dstat is all modular, you can use many other modules than this:

$ (cd /usr/share/dstat/; ls *.py)
dstat_battery.py    dstat_gpfs.py           dstat_mysql5_com.py   dstat_mysql_keys.py  dstat_postfix.py   dstat_thermal.py  dstat_topoom.py  dstat_vzcpu.py
dstat_cpufreq.py    dstat_helloworld.py     dstat_mysql5_conn.py  dstat_nfs3op.py      dstat.py           dstat_topbio.py   dstat_utmp.py    dstat_vzubc.py
dstat_dbus.py       dstat_innodb_buffer.py  dstat_mysql5_io.py    dstat_nfs3.py        dstat_rpcd.py      dstat_topcpu.py   dstat_vmkhba.py  dstat_wifi.py
dstat_freespace.py  dstat_innodb_io.py      dstat_mysql5_keys.py  dstat_nfsd3op.py     dstat_rpc.py       dstat_topio.py    dstat_vmkint.py
dstat_gpfsop.py     dstat_innodb_ops.py     dstat_mysql_io.py     dstat_nfsd3.py       dstat_sendmail.py  dstat_topmem.py   dstat_vmknic.py

So with "dstat -M battery 5", you can get the most battery consuming components when hardware supports ACPI.

Its module is just a simple py file with a simple class derived from dstat, so if there's no one fit for you, you can write your own dstat module.

Note: only CLI-based utils discussed here, I know there are many GUI-based or graph-generating tools can do better graphics, but on ther server side, "

Simple is better than complex.
"